Sony FDR AX100 UHD 4K

Beckhusen: Thanks for the link

Miz, I have read your review in B&H. I think you mentioned that downsizing was not good. So what do you do in a singular event where you shoot 4K but you also want HD?

VS50, thanks for your observations, ordered through ELECTRONIX R US for £1549 and you suggest Sandisk Extreme Pro for card as I also want to keep my SD's. Ordered a couple of pair of decoded NP-FV100 batteries, don't know if they'll be too weighty and mess up the balance of the camera but they are cheap enough anyhow. You'd think Jessops would have a recorded delivery policy at least, pretty shabby.

I always shoot in 4K. Since P5 still doesn't downsize 4K to HD I downsize to HD for P5. From what I can see and reviews from some of the "pro" guys who have shot this camera I love the HD down conversion. One report from a "famous" reviewer said that the HD is the same as 4:2:2 when converted from 4K. Maybe Miz has had a problem but I haven't.

You misunderstand - here's what I wrote:

"Don't expect to crop into these images down to HD. There is compression noise and such, also the extreme sharpening can be too much when cropping in too far. I've found cropping in about to 2200x1237.5 for export to HD is about as far as I'd push it, at least in most cases so far."

The operative is "crop into"

What that means is that if you expect to get 4 discrete quadrants of HD resolution out of one UHD picture, you will be disappointed in the results. This would likely only work in case of a TRUE RAW - totally uncompressed output. This will be true of any compressed codec from any 4K camera, likely to various levels, depending on the camera.

Rendering the whole picture (or most, in case of straightening, minor cropping, or stabilization) down to HD is awesome. It's what I always hoped HD was supposed to be.

My biggest issues with the camera remain the same, but are not making me dislike the camera. I forgive it for having heavy compression (but also appreciate it when shooting long clips waiting for something to happen) and I forgive it most of the time for not allowing me to have real Picture Profile controls (sharpness, saturation, contrast).

Oh, I see, thank you for clarifying.

I have had absolutely no issues downsizing etc. Perhaps that comes from shooting everything totally in manual mode.

Other than focus I shoot everything in 4K and manual settings.

Downsizing would not be affected by how you shoot. Read my clarification again. We are not talking downsizing. At least, I wasn't. I was indicating that CROPPING from 4K, say, in an interview, you might shoot wide, then crop in to get a cheap CU, it's OK, but not great, due to compression, which again, has nothing to do with manual or auto anything. I shoot in manual and auto everything, depending on the situation. This is one reason having the buttons all int eh right places is important. On tripod it's not such a big deal, but having the buttons in the right places when shooting handheld can mean the difference between getting the shot and not.

I tried the 50Mbps XAVC-S HD, but wondered why ... it's great HD, and is 60P capable, which is good to remember for action-packed stuff, or slowmo, but if not hoping for HD 1/2 speed slowmo, then might as well shoot 4K 30P. You can still slow down 30P a bit.

Okay then. I have cropped and gotten beautiful results as well. Here is an example:
At 4K
At Hd tight (100%)

and another...(just to scare the hell out of ya :) )
4K
HD @ 100%